Hopes Fade for Coronavirus Deal as Congress Returns to Work

On

At least there won’t be a government shutdown. But as lawmakers return to Washington for an abbreviated preelection session, hopes are dimming for another coronavirus relief bill — or much else. Talks between top Democrats and the Trump administration broke off last month and remain off track, with the bipartisan unity that drove almost $3 trillion in COVID-19 rescue legislation into law this spring replaced by partisanship and a return to Washington dysfunction. Expectations in July and August that a fifth bipartisan pandemic response bill would be agreed on despite increased obstacles has been replaced by genuine pessimism. Recent conversations about COVID-19 aidmore

Leave a comment

UW-Madison Restricts Student Movement Amid Coronavirus Spike

On

The chancellor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison on Monday canceled all in-person social events and ordered undergraduate students to restrict their movements for the next two weeks in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19.  The order from Chancellor Rebecca Blank comes as the number of coronavirus cases among students has continued to rise. Among the restrictions, from now through Sept. 21, all student gyms and recreational facilities will be closed, dining halls will offer carry-out only and visitors will not be allowed in dorms.  Blank also warned that the campus might shut down if the situation gets worse. “We’vemore

Leave a comment

Hopes Fading for Coronavirus Deal as Congress Returns

On

At least there won’t be a government shutdown. But as lawmakers return to Washington for an abbreviated preelection session, hopes are dimming for another coronavirus relief bill — or much else. Talks between top Democrats and the Trump administration broke off last month and remain off track, with the bipartisan unity that drove almost $3 trillion in COVID-19 rescue legislation into law this spring replaced by partisanship and a return to Washington dysfunction. Expectations in July and August that a fifth bipartisan pandemic response bill would be agreed on despite increased obstacles has been replaced by genuine pessimism. Recent conversations about COVID-19 aidmore

Leave a comment

Trump Supporters Meet for Vehicle Rally Outside Portland

On

Hundreds of people gathered Monday afternoon in a small town south of Portland for a pro-Donald Trump vehicle rally — just more than a week after a member of a far-right group was fatally shot after a Trump caravan went through Oregon’s largest city. Vehicles waving flags for Trump, the QAnon conspiracy theory and in support of police gathered at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City about noon, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. The rally’s organizers said they would drive to the state capital, Salem, and members of the right-wing groups the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer would be in attendance. Organizers saidmore

Leave a comment

Trump, Biden Clash Over COVID-19 Vaccine Rhetoric

On

U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday unleashed another extended verbal attack on his opponent in the November election, claiming that the Democratic Party nominees Joe Biden and Kamala Harris “should immediately apologize for the reckless anti-vaccine rhetoric.” Biden said on Monday that he would like to see a vaccine tomorrow, even if it cost him the election. But “if we do have a really good vaccine, people are going to be reluctant to take it” because the president’s repeated misstatements and falsehoods with respect to the virus are “undermining public confidence.” “He’s said so many things that aren’t true,” Biden said. Trump, holdingmore

Leave a comment

1st Presidential Debate Set for September 29

On

Now that the U.S. presidential nominating conventions have ended, the next key date on the campaign calendar is Tuesday, September 29 — the race’s first presidential debate. Republican President Donald Trump and his Democratic Party rival, former vice president Joe Biden, spent the week after the conventions making their opening arguments in some of the U.S. States critical to winning the election, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina.  “I think that we can expect to see a rowdy debate between the two presidential candidates,” said Jennifer Mercieca, assistant professor of Communications at Texas A&M University. “Both of these candidates are fighters.” Mercieca says indications ofmore

Leave a comment

Colleges Combating Coronavirus Turn to Stinky Savior: Sewage

On

Days after he crossed the country to start college, Ryan Schmutz received a text message from Utah State University: COVID-19 had been detected at his dorm.  Within 10 minutes, he dropped the crepes he was making and was whisked away by bus to a testing site.”We didn’t even know they were testing,” said Schmutz, who is 18 and from Omaha, Nebraska. “It all really happened fast.”Schmutz was one of about 300 students quarantined to their rooms last week, but not because of sickness reports or positive tests. Instead, the warning bells came from the sewage.  Colleges across the nation —more

Leave a comment

Hungarian Protesters Demand Academic Freedom for Top Arts University

On

Several thousand people protested Sunday for the independence of Hungary’s University of Theatre and Film Arts following the imposition of a government-appointed board, which they say will undermine its autonomy.The management of the school, which nurtured many of Hungary’s most famous directors and filmmakers, resigned Monday in protest over the changes, which have also prompted several top theater directors to quit their teaching roles.Attendants of the rally formed a chain in the streets of central Budapest before the crowd gathered at a main square outside Parliament, demanding autonomy for the school and freedom for artistic endeavor and education.Prime Minister Viktormore

Leave a comment

New York Arena Becomes Polling Site Following NBA Player Protest

On

About 20 U.S. professional basketball teams will convert their venues into pandemic-safe voting centers for the 2020 presidential election. The move is part of a deal with the NBA players, who briefly halted their participation in the season-ending playoffs to protest racial injustice and police brutality. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports the latest arena to announce its plans is New York City’s Barclays Center, home to the Brooklyn Nets. …

Leave a comment

White House Defends Trump’s Concerns About Mail-In Voting

On

The White House is defending its efforts to protect the November presidential election from outside interference following a revelation that Russian “malign … actors” have been echoing President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings about potential election fraud.”We’re going to do everything we can to protect the sanctity of our election,” National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told reporters Friday, adding the White House and the president have taken “unprecedented action” to protect the November vote.FILE – National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House in Washington, May 21, 2020.”We’ve made it very clearmore

Leave a comment

More Support for Trump’s Concerns About Mail-In Voting

On

The White House is defending its efforts to protect the November presidential election from outside interference following a revelation that Russian “malign … actors” have been echoing President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings about potential election fraud.”We’re going to do everything we can to protect the sanctity of our election,” U.S. National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told reporters Friday, adding the White House and the president have taken “unprecedented action” to protect the November vote.National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien speaks to reporters outside of the West Wing of the White House in Washington on May 21, 2020.”We’ve made it very clearmore

Leave a comment

DC University Investigating White Professor Who Claimed to Be Black

On

George Washington University is investigating the case of a history professor who allegedly admitted to fraudulently pretending to be a Black woman for her entire career.In a blog post that has gained international attention, a writer claiming to be Jessica Krug, a GW associate professor of history, writes that she is in fact a white Jewish woman.”I concealed my past as a white Jewish child from the residential suburbs of Kansas City in favor of several black identities that I was not allowed to claim: first Black from North Africa, then African-American , and finally Black from the Bronx, ofmore

Leave a comment

Pelosi Takes Heat Over Visit to California Salon

On

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is getting heat over a solo hair salon visit in San Francisco at a time when California businesses are limited by concern over coronavirus.But Pelosi’s spokesman said she was complying with the rules as presented to her by eSalon SF. “This business offered for the Speaker to come in on Monday and told her they were allowed by the city to have one customer at a time in the business,” said spokesman Drew Hammill in a statement. “The Speaker complied with the rules as presented to her by this establishment.” Footage aired by Fox News Channelmore

Leave a comment

North Carolina Kicks Off Mail Voting as Requests Spike

On

Mail balloting in the presidential election is set to begin Friday as North Carolina starts sending out more than 600,000 ballots to voters — responding to a massive spike in requests that has played out across the country as voters look for a safer way to cast ballots during the pandemic.     The 618,000 ballots requested in the initial wave in North Carolina were more than 16 times the number the state sent out at the same time four years ago. The requests came overwhelmingly from Democratic and independent voters, a reflection of a new partisan divide over mailmore

Leave a comment

University of Oklahoma Students: Virus Response Inadequate

On

More than a dozen students gathered outside the University of Oklahoma’s administration building Thursday to protest what they say is an inadequate response to the coronavirus pandemic.Students are violating the university and the city of Norman’s mask mandates at bars, restaurants and at fraternity and sorority functions, OU student Kellie Dick, a senior from Shawnee, told The Associated Press.”We really need people to wear their masks, I don’t want this to kill any more people than it already has,” Dick said.There are a reported 909 newly confirmed coronavirus cases in Oklahoma on Thursday and 14 more deaths due to COVID-19,more

Leave a comment

Trump Denies Report That he Spoke Disparagingly of US War Dead

On

President Donald Trump strongly denied on Thursday a magazine report saying he had spoken disparagingly about fallen U.S. military personnel buried in Europe and declined to visit an American cemetery during a trip to France because he thought it unimportant.The Atlantic reported that Trump, a Republican who is running for reelection and who has touted his record helping U.S. veterans, had referred to Marines buried in an American cemetery near Paris as “losers” and declined to visit in 2018 because of concern that the rain that day would mess up his hair.Trump told reporters on Thursday the story was false.”Tomore

Leave a comment

‘Follow Your Vote,’ Trump Tells Mail-in Ballot Voters

On

President Donald Trump has introduced more confusion into what already stands to be America’s most difficult presidential election in modern times by suggesting — and then partly backing away from — a legally dubious scheme in which his supporters would try to vote twice in order to test voting safeguards.“Let them send it in and let them go vote,” Trump said in an interview on Wednesday with WECT-TV in Wilmington, North Carolina. “And if the system is as good as they say it is, then obviously they won’t be able to vote” in person.On Thursday in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Trump seeminglymore

Leave a comment

EPA Chief Pledges More Cleanups, Less Focus on Climate

On

Environmental Protection Agency chief Andrew Wheeler on Thursday defended the Trump administration’s record on protecting the nation’s air and water and said a second term would bring a greater focus on pollution cleanups in disadvantaged communities and less emphasis on climate change.In a speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the EPA’s founding, Wheeler said the agency was moving back toward an approach that had long promoted economic growth as well as a healthy environment and drawn bipartisan support.”Unfortunately, in the past decade or so, some members of former administrations and progressives in Congress have elevated single issue advocacy – inmore

Leave a comment

Judges Skeptical Toward Trump Plan to Exclude Many Immigrants From Representation

On

U.S. judges appeared skeptical on Thursday toward President Donald Trump’s recent directive to exclude people who are in the United States illegally from representation when apportioning congressional seats. A three-judge panel in Manhattan sharply questioned a lawyer defending Trump and the Department of Commerce against lawsuits by 38 U.S. states, cities and counties, plus several immigrants rights nonprofits, over the July 21 directive. The plaintiffs said the directive violated a requirement in the U.S. Constitution to count the “whole number of persons in each state,” and could shift seats in the House of Representatives, with California, Texas and New Jersey most likelymore

Leave a comment

Trump’s Voting Suggestion Causes Confusion, Facebook Label

On

U.S. President Donald Trump attempted to clarify Thursday comments he made a day earlier urging his supporters to vote twice to ensure their votes are counted, comments that have sown confusion over his intended message and caused Facebook to label his claims as misleading.   In tweets on Thursday, the president asserted that sending in absentee ballots and then going to the polls to check that your ballot arrived and if not to vote in person would serve as a check against a mail-in voting system he has repeatedly predicted, without evidence, will result in corruption, miscounting and unacceptable delays.  Presidentmore

Leave a comment

Trump Orders Review of US Aid to ‘Anarchist Jurisdictions’

On

U.S. President Donald Trump has opened a new front in his conflict with Democratic-led cities, ordering top officials to determine whether the national government can cut federal aid to certain municipalities that he describes as “anarchist jurisdictions.” In a memo Wednesday, Trump directed the White House Office of Management and Budget to offer guidance to federal agencies on cutting funding to cities that “defund” their police departments after weeks of urban protests targeting Trump and police abuse of minorities.“My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones,” the president’s memo states.more

Leave a comment

Pelosi, Mnuchin Agree on Plan to Avoid Government Shutdown

On

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Trump administration have informally agreed to keep a stopgap government-wide funding bill — needed to avert a shutdown at the end of this month — free of controversy or conflict. The accord is aimed at keeping any possibility of a government shutdown off the table despite ongoing battles over COVID-19 relief legislation, while sidestepping the potential for other shutdown drama in the run-up to the November election. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks during a news conference in San Francisco, Sept. 2, 2020.That’s according to Democratic and GOP aides on Capitol Hill who have been briefed onmore

Leave a comment

Audiobook Compiles ’60 Minutes’ Interviews with Barack Obama

On

More than a dozen “60 Minutes” interviews with former President Barack Obama, beginning when he was a U.S. Senator, have been compiled into an audio release. Simon & Schuster Audio announced Thursday that “Barack Obama: The 60 Minutes Interviews” will come out Oct. 13. The audiobook features CBS News journalist Steve Kroft, who first met with Obama in January 2007 and spoke with him throughout his presidency, culminating in a discussion shortly before Obama left office in 2017. “Over the span of just a few years, Barack Obama evolved from inexperienced freshman senator into one of the most powerful peoplemore

Leave a comment

Facebook to Halt New Political Ads Week Before US Election

On

Facebook Inc said on Thursday it would stop accepting new political ads in the week before the U.S. presidential election in November, bowing to concern that its loose approach to free speech could once again be exploited to interfere with the vote.   The world’s biggest social network also said it was creating a label for posts by candidates or campaigns that try to claim victory before the election results are official, and widening the criteria for content to be removed as voter suppression.   Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post announcing the changes that he wasmore

Leave a comment